More Articles

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoFile photo“We’re going to take the case where it goes, the facts where they go,” said former Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery concerning her investigation into the Ohio State University marching band.

Betty Montgomery, who will lead an expanded inquiry into the Ohio State University marching
band, said that she won’t retrace the steps of the previous investigation that led to the firing of
band director Jonathan Waters.

After a meeting yesterday with OSU President Dr. Michael V. Drake and Jeffrey Wadsworth, the
chairman of the university board of trustees, Montgomery said there has been confusion about her
upcoming work.

“There’s a misconception I think that we will retread that ground to see if the conclusion was
correct. That’s not our mission,” said Montgomery, a former Ohio attorney general, state senator
and Wood County prosecutor. “We’re going to take the case where it goes, the facts where they
go."

She gave few other details and declined to explain the scope of the investigation or whether it
will look at other band leaders. The inquiry will include interviews with many witnesses, she said,
but she didn’t provide a timeline.

“We all know and appreciate that we need to move with deliberate haste, a deliberate speed, to
get the job done,” she said.

Montgomery didn’t say who would be on her task force, which is to be independent of the
university. But Drake has said that it will include help from the firm Ernst & Young, plus the
Sports Conflict Institute, a company that helps mediate and resolve problems in pro and college
sports teams.

Ohio State plans to release more details about the new investigation next week, Montgomery said.
Drake and Wadsworth plan to send Montgomery a letter explaining their goals for the investigation,
she said.

Investigators in the OSU Office of University Compliance and Integrity reported last week that
they found a “sexualized” culture in the band. They said that Waters, who had been director since
2012, knew about some of the problems or should have known about them, but did too little to stop
them.

Offenses listed in the report include raunchy nicknames that band members gave each other and a
midnight session in which band members marched in their underwear. There also was a sexual assault
in the marching band and reported sexual harassment in the athletic band, also under the purview of
Waters.

Investigators wrote that Waters mishandled the sexual-harassment complaint.

But an attorney working for Waters challenges much of the report. It relies on interviews with
about 10 current or former students, not a representative sample of the 225-member band, lawyer
David Axelrod said.

Axelrod also provided a document explaining that Waters had worked to change the culture in the
band, including work to curb alcohol abuse and to ban nicknames. Many former band members have come
forward, too, to say that the report gives a skewed image of the band and its traditions.